Posts Tagged writing life

I am so chuffed to be on The Quivering Pen books blog, the online hideout of Iraq War novelist David Abrams. I’ve been following it for years. I have shamelessly headhunted many of its guests for The Undercover Soundtrack (and yes, you’ll see David’s Soundtrack here soon).

David has a series called My First Time, where authors confess a virgin experience of writing and publishing life. I’m there today talking about distraction projects – creative stuff you do when you really should be doing something else. You probably all know my travel diary is one of those, but I’ve actually been far more distractible than that. In my time I’ve made recipe books and a music soundtrack for a series of illustrated books. All of which taught me surprising things when I returned to my proper work.

Anyway, do pop over. Especially if you really should be doing something more important.

Didn’t I say in January that I had a book I would write quickly? A book based on my travel diaries. A book that should have required a quick spit and polish, then out of the nest it would go.

But no, the months have passed, and if you followed my newsletter you’ll have seen the progress through rough edits, reconcepting, purge of darlings, second purge of darlings, beta reader 1, beta reader 2, reader 3, reader 4, final polish, snapshots of typesetting on Facebook and final sigh of relief.

January to July: seven months to take a book from personal notes to publicly presentable. It was a lot more work than I thought it would be, but still quite fast by my usual standards.

I haven’t been doing it full time, of course. My usual freelance editing gigs have snowballed, and sometimes I’ve been fighting to protect a few hours for my book. Equally, it’s benefited from being consigned to the basement, cogitating. If I’d had an uninterrupted run, it wouldn’t be the book it is.

Finding a destination

‘Finding a destination’ is generally the biggest challenge of the bookwriting process for me. It’s what takes literary writers so long (which I posted about here).

It also doesn’t seem confined to writing, by any means. I recently stumbled across these lines in an obituary published in The Economist of the mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani:

By her own account, she was “slow” …. she teased out solutions by doodling for hours on vast sheets of paper … the point, she said, was not to write down all the details, but to stay connected to the problem. She likened mathematical enquiry to being lost in a forest, gathering knowledge, to come up with some new tricks, until you suddenly reach a hilltop and see everything clearly.’

I’m a card-carrying slowcoach, and I see this same struggle in the Facebook feeds of writer friends. It’s the hell of book writing, and also, eventually the heaven. You did it. You persevered, you made a substantial something out of fat nothing; just a notion that took your fancy or kept you fretting. The fact that it took so long is, in the end, part of the triumph. You persevered with a possibility that no one else saw, shaped it in a way that no one else would. Finally, a stranger can take your trip and say ‘I never went there before’.

Plankton

So far, so personally rewarding. But we stumble over the finish line and into an immovable fact. This cherished, nurtured, shiny new book is a speck in a sea of plankton. There are not enough eyes to read all the books that are published. It’s the best of times to be a writer and the worst of times to try to make a living at it, or run a publishing company. The Guardian recently published this piece with a bleak view, which we can boil down to this: barring a miracle, hardly anybody will buy it.

So does the world need my new book?

We have so many already. Good books; great books. The human condition doesn’t change.

Certainly it doesn’t, and Chaucer still resonates now. I’ll read a book from the 1950s as readily as the 2000teens. Dave keeps urging me to read New Grub Street by George Gissing, which was published in 1891 and nails the creative industries exactly as they are today. But sometimes we want the company of contemporary minds. People might not change, but the world will always do things that are, for better or worse, unpresidented.

Even if your work is not tackling current issues, it still comes through contemporary sensibilities. Although authors primarily write for their own reasons – personal fulfilment, making a living – the world does still need them.

The duty we have now is to publish only what deserves to be. To use a reader’s time wisely and responsibly.

Still, why write?

But selling books can be so soul-shrivelling, particularly today. So why do we still write more? We do it because the long process of conversation with an idea, like Maryam the mathematician, is intrinsic to those who are creative. Even though it’s often agony to face a blank page. The writer in the Guardian goes back into her cycle, the way we all do – not knowing if she has the goods to do it again.

The selfish gene?

Is that primarily a selfish process? It must seem so. But at the least, it must make us wiser people. To understand our own themes forces us to see them from more sides than just our own. We might delve a long way in research to write a situation truthfully. To create a character who isn’t a stereotype, we might have to admire their flaws or be critical of their virtues. Our invented people teach us tolerance and generosity.

Even my travel tales – which were not invented – had to be revisited with a more critical eye.

And so, for better or for worse, I have a new book. Because that is what I do.

Any kind of merchant has to deal with damaged stock from time to time, but authors are usually shielded from this inevitable part of bookish life. Unless you self-publish, in which case you might be faced with this.

No, that wasn’t how the books arrived. They came to me slightly damaged, but in order to claim replacements, I … (deep breath) …. had to rip the covers off!

My friend Henry Hyde is kicking off a series on his blog called Writing Insights, and I’m honoured to be his first guinea pig. He asked me questions about my writing methods, publishing decisions and advice I would have given myself as a beginner, which led to discussions of separation anxiety, misfit books and novels that take their sweet long time to develop. Do come over.

It’s five years since I released My Memories of a Future Life. I actually hadn’t realised it was that long ago, but Facebook has an algorithm that nudges you to repost old updates. And recently it gave me this:

Still, I wasn’t feeling especially retrospective until I happened upon this post by Caroline Leavitt at Jane Friedman’s blog, which talked about a few realities of author life. And I thought: yes. Releasing that book marked a big change. A set of new and unforeseen challenges.

Pic from Wikimedia Commons

1 Lovely reactions – which will wildly delight you

My Memories of a Future Life wasn’t my first book. I’d ghosted lots of titles (more about that here), so I was used to seeing my work bound between covers. I’d also published the first Nail Your Novelbook, and knew how nice it was to get feedback. But fiction sets up a different kind of relationship. I received long emails and reviews – as if the book had started a thoughtful and personal conversation. I didn’t know this happened.

2 Upsetting reactions – your author friends will see you through

In her piece, Caroline Leavitt talks about bad reviews. We all accept we’re not going to please everybody, so we shrug and move on. But sometimes, a bad reaction really knocks you. Especially if it’s soon after the release, when the book is finding its way.

I had two.

The first was from a pre-release reader. It all started well. He wrote me emails while reading, chapter by chapter, saying how much he was enjoying the book. Then the end threw him right out of whack. It wasn’t what he was expecting. He sent a long, wounded email.

I was prepared for disagreement, or even dislike. I’d had the book rubber-stamped by people who wouldn’t let me get away with bad work. But still, my confidence was battered. This reader was genuinely upset and I didn’t want that.

My fellow authors told me: ‘Never apologise for your book’. Even so, I wrote back – which I shouldn’t have done and probably wouldn’t now. He replied, calmer, admitting there were complicating personal factors. Quite horrendous ones, as it happened. Still, I sneaked back to my blurb and description and examined them carefully, in case any of it was misleading.

The other upsetting reaction was a thoroughly scathing review. A blogger eviscerated it viciously. Again, I wondered what to do. Again, other authors held me down: ‘It’s dripping with malice. Some people do that. Stop being so sensitive. You don’t have to do anything.’

This time I heeded their advice. But I worried about that streak of spite, sitting on a blog for all to see, a stain on my book’s reputation before it had had much of a chance in the world. And I also didn’t do anything about the person who voiced plenty of critical opinions about the book but managed to reveal she hadn’t read it.

Two lessons here. 1 – other authors are your rock. 2 – you have to hope that on balance, you reach enough of the right people.

3 Your book changes you – a deep work of fiction is a work of personal examination

You mine yourself to write a novel like that. Your central characters come from your understanding of the people around you, and of yourself. Spending time with people in deep crisis, even imaginary ones, can change you. As do your antagonists. In order to make them rounded, I had to empathise with their point of view.

Carol’s end point made me examine some of my own life. Her psychological journey felt like my own rite of passage, a memoir in parallel, even though it was all invented.

Hence the need to be talked down, from time to time.

4 When the book comes out, that’s not the end

When I ghost-write, my contribution finishes when the book goes to press. But your own book needs constant shepherding and revisiting – and not just for promotion. I made an audiobook, which meant presenting it to voice actors, discussing the characters and approach – and finally, listening to the recordings chapter by chapter (which revealed how much of it I had completely forgotten). This year I was interviewed at the Clapham Literary Festival by Elizabeth Buchan, so had to brush up on it again.

Tip – keep a list of your old interviews so you know what you said about your book when it was fresh. Also read your good reviews so you can discuss the themes and bigger picture – I found my smartest reviewers identified these more readily than I could.

5 Your debut is a special time – enjoy it

‘Debut’ is a good word for releasing your first novel. ‘Inauguration’ would be a good word too. It’s more than just putting a book on public sale. It’s the beginning of a new order. Even though I’d written for years, been published under cover, taught and mentored, produced oodles of other books, nothing was like this. Releasing my own novel was like finally putting my feet down, having a voice in something I hadn’t been part of before.

But he was right and it’s now wearing its new jacket. I was going to sneak it out without much ado because, well, it’s just a jacket. But I didn’t anticipate how new it would feel, all over again.

Which is where we came in.

If you’ve released a novel, what took you by surprise? Is there anything you’d do differently? Any advice you’d pass on? And I think next time I owe you a writing craft post, so if there’s something you’d like me to tackle, leave it in the comments or drop me an email on RozMorrisWriter at gmail dotcom.

Some of you know that I began my writing career incognito, as a ghost-writer. It gave me certain habits and approaches that I still use to this day, and I’m sure they were a head start for productive writing processes. Today I’m talking about those habits at Jo Malby’s blog. (And as I’ve had two guest posts this week, I hope you’ll forgive me for taking the rest of the weekend off. There is bank holidaying to do, as well as a spot of writing.)

And if you’re wondering about ghost-writing yourself, let me clear my throat discreetly and point you to this…

You might think that’s an obvious thing for a writer to say. But I’d like to think about why.

Let’s put aside certain practicalities. Obviously the book had to be reshaped to translate it to TV, and updated for 2016 (technology, current world events, making a key character female).

That’s not what I want to talk about; I’m interested here in the medium of delivery. The watching senses compared with the reading ones. Why do I find reading the novel is more special than watching the show?

Books are interior

A key difference is the organisation of Jonathan Pine’s back story. In the TV version this is streamlined into simple chronological order, but the novel shuffles the material to us in digressions. A character makes a remark and Pine is taken back to an earlier event. At first this seems quite digressive, but gradually you’re bedded more deeply into Pine’s buried layers, his stifled memories and his slow awakening into a new man.

This interority is something that’s difficult for TV or film to achieve, although Krzysztof Kieślowski is a notable example of a writer-director who does. But usually, watching makes us outsiders. So the BBC’s Night Manager is an adventure story – and a gripping one. The novel is that too, but it’s also more secret, troubled and private.

Characters and reality

Somehow, I’m finding the characters on the page are more tangible than when they are played by actors. Le Carré’s descriptions seem more potent than seeing an actor physically embody a person. In a film, a character comes to you complete – with hands, voice, expression, stance, clothes. In prose, a character usually appears in fragments. Those fragments are the magic.

For instance, describing Richard Roper’s charm. An actor could play charm, but a writer can pinpoint the essence of that charm – and make us notice something about how charm works:

He let you know that you could tell him anything, and he would still be smiling at the end of it.’

The author is not a camera giving head-to-toe details; he is a judging, communicating intelligence who can show us what it’s like to be in a person’s presence, at a given moment. It gives you experience as well as observation. Describing Roper’s girlfriend Jed:

Her wit and language have a hypnotic draw. There is something irresistibly funny to everyone, including herself, about the convent-educated English voice enunciating the vocabulary of a navvy. “Darling, do we actually give a fart about the Donahues?” ’

Could a camera or an actor ever express that, and so precisely? And this, when Jonathan Pine is increasingly troubled by the siren Jed:

He watched her in fragments forced upon him. A chance view of her entire upper body in her bedroom mirror while she was changing…’

How would a camera say ‘forced upon him’?

I find this to be a wonderful paradox. A good writer can make a character more alive in your mind than a flesh-and-blood actor can. An actor seems to give just physicality. No matter how closely a camera observes their face, it’s happening at a distance. But a writer is inside your intellect and your feelings. With a well-turned line they can they give you the experience of being with a person – or indeed of being them. You’re passing a door, arrested by a glimpse of a girl undressing.

Feeling perceptive

The cleverness of a good author makes you feel a bit ennobled, better with words yourself. More intelligent, perceptive. Words are far, far more fun than watching.

Take a bad toupee. (Go on, you know you want to.) Le Carré describes it as ‘like a black bear’s paw’. Isn’t it far more fun to read that description than to see a bad toupee in a picture? In a million years, would you have thought of that line? When you read, you share the mind of someone who does.

And this.

Women with chiselled faces they never had when they were young, and tucked stomachs and tucked bottoms … but no surgery on earth could spare them the manacled slowness of old age as they lowered themselves into the pool…’

A good writer knows how to go ‘straight to the switchboard’.

Stop – isn’t that an excellent line? It’s not mine, it’s le Carré. A phrase used by Roper’s security guard when describing a technique of interrogation.

And here’s another difference I like. You take a book at your own speed. Dawdle as long as you like over a page, a paragraph, a phrase. In a movie you obey the director’s clock, or the editor’s. In a book, the author sets the pace, of course, but you can adjust it. Linger over a passage you like. Skim the parts you don’t.

I hadn’t considered how important that was until Husband Dave and I read the same book simultaneously. We found we had two copies of William Boyd’s Ordinary Thunderstormsso we did them in tandem, like a real-time book club. It was fun. We could say ‘I didn’t like the bit where…’ or ‘I’m hoping the character won’t do such-and-such’. I was aware, though, that I was reading to a schedule, so I didn’t let myself linger or dawdle as usual – and I felt rushed.

Reading a book you enjoy isn’t, actually, a hop from this word to this then this, like watching subtitles on a movie or the lyrics prompt on karaoke. It’s not a linear trot through the page from top to bottom, in order. If you want, it can be more like snakes and ladders. You can check a fact or a character name. Wander back to enjoy a favourite fragment again. You can take a book in your own time, your personal journey.

Ultimately, a book plays with your mind more, yet belongs to you more as well. Perhaps that’s it.

Most of us here probably have a shoal of books about writing craft. Here’s just one of my shelves.

But which was the first writing book you ever read?

For me, it was The Craft of Novel-Writing by Dianne Doubtfire. It was a gift from Husband Dave when we first met in 1992. It’s a tiny volume; just 87 pages including the index at the end and throat-clearing at the start. But it has everything you need – theme, viewpoint, planning, setting, characterisation, style, revision.

I flick through it now. At random, I can see sensible advice to use ‘he said’ instead of ‘she gushed’ or ‘he averred’. A section on writing description so the reader remains riveted, with examples from Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene. A paragraph about keeping a notebook beside the bed, including a torch. An explanation of style as ‘a quality as unique as your fingerprints’. A quote from Alfred Hitchcock that ‘drama is like real life with the dull bits cut out’. A section on first chapters, positioned nearly half-way through, because ‘it’s wise to consider … planning, scene and characterisation before you type ‘Chapter 1’.

Other books may cover all of these in more depth, but as a primer it will get you going with good habits. I’d recommend it still today.

To begin at the beginning…

I’d studied English literature at school and university. Yes, we considered theme, character, resonance, symmetries and counterpoints in character arcs and story structure. And historical and social context, an author’s place in the overall evolution in the artform. But I wanted more. I wanted to know why good was good. Reading Dianne Doubtfire was like meeting someone who thought and felt about books in the way I wanted to.

Studying literature can put it in on a pedestal as a thing to be revered. It can paralyse you with feelings that you could never, yourself, presume to write to a standard that’s even readable, let alone half-creditable.

Dianne Doubtfire’s succinct, wise book made writing seem possible.

Psst … Speaking of writing books, and flashing forwards many moons and scrumpled drafts, I’ve been jazzing up the Nail Your Novel covers. Take a peek here…

Can you remember the first writing craft book you read? How did you come to read it? How did it affect you? Did it open possibilities? Did it make it all seem impossible? If you still have a copy, what do you think of it now?

A few months ago I mentioned in one of my newsletters that I was submitting my novels to Amazon Crossing, and one of my Undercover Soundtrackers, Alison Layland, sent me a ‘good luck’ note. But I didn’t know that Alison is herself a literary translator – and that made me think it would be fun to run a post on this often unexplored corner of writing life. A call to my Twitter followers unearthed two more literary polyglots. So if you’ve ever wondered if translation would be a good career for you, or considered working with a translator, or are simply curious … read on.

Dramatis personae

Rachel Ward

Rachel Ward @fwdtranslations translates from French and German to English, particularly crime fiction, women’s fiction and children’s books. In non-fiction, she has translated recipe books and titles on history, art and politics.

Lisa Carter

Lisa Carter @Intralingo translates from Spanish into English. Her work includes literary fiction, historical fiction, a scientific thriller and clockpunk. She’s also done one work of non-fiction, by a Guatemalan Mayan shaman.

Alison Layland

And Alison Layland @alisonlayland translates from German, French and Welsh into English. Her CV includes a range of nonfiction (travel guides, coffee-table photo books, a recipe book) and, in the last few years literary, crime and romance fiction, alongside her own novel writing. (Here’s her Undercover Soundtrack.) Her most recent translation, The Moonlit Garden by Corina Bomann, is published by AmazonCrossing on 1 February 2016.

To begin at the beguine

Rachel took a languages degree, then a literary translation MA. Alison also had a languages degree and became a freelance translator as a career change. Commissions came as she built up relationships with translation agencies and networked with other translators. Most of her fiction work has been for AmazonCrossing; they have an online portal where translators can register and apply for projects, and recommend books to be considered for translation.

Alison says that if your aim is purely literary translation, it’s often a matter of championing a work in your source language and submitting proposals to publishers – although it can be a frustrating and difficult path. Despite that, this is how Lisa Carter got her break. A collection of short stories by Edmundo Paz Soldán captivated her so deeply that she contacted the author. ‘We worked together and published a couple of his short stories, then I was hired to translate two of his novels for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.’

After that, commissions come from networking and contacts, and being in the right place at the right time. Alison says: ‘My non-fic books have come from translation agencies or direct enquiries via my profile or colleague referrals. My first literary translation, The Colour of Dawn by Haitian author Yanick Lahens, was commissioned by the publisher as a result of my winning a competition in which I translated one of the author’s short stories from French into English.’

Lisa says she’s seen a change in the way work comes to her. In the past, publishers would approach her to see if she was a good match for a particular book. But ‘in the last few years, more commissions are coming directly from authors.’

We’ll look at self-publishing in a minute. But first, let’s consider the literary translator’s most outstanding feature.

The chameleon factor

There’s more to literary translation than rendering the content accurately. Like ghostwriting, good translation is a work of interpretation. The final work must do justice to the writer’s style. I asked about the challenges.

Rachel: ‘Being able to adapt to a writer’s style is just as important as conveying the meaning. Some voices sit nicely alongside my own, while others take longer to settle into. I do a quick first draft and leave a lot of alternative wordings, and then go back over it again and again until I’m satisfied, or the deadline arrives. I get as many people as possible to read for me too, looking for anything that jars.

Alison: ‘I usually read the novel first, and possibly others by the author, to decide if there are any issues I need to think about. The voice develops as I translate (and often the early chapters need more revision). It can be quite different from your own voice, but again, your writer’s voice changes between different novels and stories.

Lisa: That’s exactly it: we are chameleons. We have to sublimate our own personal style to portray what we have been given, down to the very last detail. The challenge is how to reflect all of the nuances of an original, rather than keeping our own voice at bay. I spend a lot of time studying a text before I begin to translate it. I look for how an author created a certain tone or mood or effect – things like sentence and paragraph length, determining what literary devices are being used, finding all of the elements that are specific to an author and a particular book. Only after I have deconstructed the text do I allow intuition to take over and begin putting words on the page. I then compare my draft to the original, to make sure I’m being faithful. Whenever time allows—and I always try to build this into my contracts — I let the manuscript rest before another edit. Then, depending on the situation, I might send the manuscript to the author to read (if they are fluent enough in English) so we can discuss the work as a whole before submitting it to the editor.’

Alison says translators are often overlooked in media reviews, radio broadcasts and festival programmes, but the recent #NameTheTranslator Twitter campaign aims to draw people’s attention to this. And to thank them when they do give credit.

Rachel says the translator’s name should come after the author – ‘eg Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang, tr. Rachel Ward, Andersen 2003. There is some dispute about whether the translator’s name should go on the front cover, but it should definitely be on the title page, and the translation copyright should belong to the translator, not the publisher.’

An occupational hazard

Alison points out an interesting hazard of the translator’s life: ‘On the few occasions when readers don’t like aspects of a novel – the characters or plot – they might attribute it to “something being lost in translation” – regardless of whether it is a translation issue.’

What about working with self-published authors?

Lisa has just begun a self-publishing venture with an author from Spain, Luis Sanz Irles. His novel was published traditionally in Spanish, and they will self-publish the translation into English. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this for years, and so am truly excited.’

Rachel says she has worked with self-published authors on a few occasions. She says there are artistic advantages – ‘you can go straight to the horse’s mouth with questions on meaning. I might suggest an explanatory aside or that it might be good to add something to help the reader with an unfamiliar idea.’ But this access has disadvantages: ‘Obviously we both want to get it right, but there has to be a cut-off point if it comes to haggling over words or beloved phrases.’ There are business angles to consider as well, and the translator has to take on the bulk of the marketing. Rachel has a lot more about this on her blog.

Thanks for the chameleon pic Swaminathan. Alison’s portrait is by Sandra Dalton.

Over to you! Have you worked with a translator or are you considering it? Have you worked on translations yourself? Is there anything you’d like to ask our intrepid trio? In the meantime, clavar tu novela.

Yesterday I spoke at the New Generation Publishing selfpub summit, and the discussions threw up some interesting paradoxes that writers encounter.

1 We must produce, but never rush.
Unless we’re writing only for the satisfaction of filling a document, we need an output mentality. We set schedules, aim to present work to critiquers, editors and readers, build a rack of titles for more market share and £££. But we must also learn our natural pace to give a book the proper time.

Last week Maya Goode took my post about the slow-burn writer and added some thoughts of her own, resolving to be swift with her blogging output, and leisurely about her fiction. (To an extent, this post will include a hopscotch through my archives. If you’ve recently arrived on this blog and these ideas strike a chord, these links are a junction box for further exploring.)

Here I’m going to advance a theory. If there’s such a thing as a natural writer, it’s a person who is unusually sensitive to prose. For such people, a book isn’t just a story told on pages, it’s a transformation they’re observing on their own heart and mind. With every phrase, a clutch of neurones parses this question – what did that do? (Honestly, it doesn’t spoil the fun. It’s part of the pleasure. Quick question – how many of us here are slow readers?)

3 We make our own rules but recognise when we’re wrong.
Much of the time, the writing process is an experiment. If we’re novice authors, we’re searching for our style, our voice, our signature. Even when we’re experienced, we still grapple with uncertainty – a stubborn plot, obscure characters. Each book goes through a formative stage with shaky bits, and feedback to do things differently. Sometimes that feedback is dead right; sometimes it’s way off beam. We need to assert our own vision – but also know when to listen.